Photoessay #2090 - Faces of Loss

These pictures have been sitting on my desk for a few weeks, somehow they spoke to me.

March 2006, shortly after Jim's (Dennis' dad) death.  Dennis and Victoria, his sister, at the cemetery.  We did a memorial for him rather an actual burial service.  I think we went directly to the cemetery after the memorial. We designed the headstones that day.  Some of my children were also there.

I liked the way the cemetery handled the design of the headstone.  They sat all of the family members down at a table with a lot of catalogs of stones and images, some blank paper and some pencils and crayons.

"Figure out what you want,:" they said.

So we did and we all felt good about the result.  As Dennis and Victoria looked through the books, they decided on some flower images, some roses.  Besides the names and the dates, we all decided that "Loving husband" and "Loving wife" was the best.  Victoria said "they always were all about the each other, that was their whole life."  True.  We put the roses at the outer part so that the design pulled them closer together.

I likely have the image of the headstones somewhere.  I can find them or go and take a picture myself.  I put a letterbox in the tree right next to them as a tribute.  It's quite visible but it's still there after several years.

But what strikes me about these two pictures is how it feels when you lose your parents.  So shocking and final.  You just can't anticipate how it feels.  No matter what conflicts you might have, they are so much a part of you, you just can't believe that part has been wrenched from you.  Just as you really can't imagine your own death, you can't believe that your own parents will be gone.

I feel like that.

At that time, Lanaya was still alive but, in a nursing home and so debilitated, she was gone already.  She died about 18 months later.

The pictures of Dennis and Victoria, brother and sister, somehow summed it up for me.  How it feels when your parent is gone.  The images both showed them looking to the left.  I could have reversed one but I chose not to.  Lost in their own thoughts, are they looking forward or backwards?  Not for us to know but I feel they're looking back.